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What are you waiting for?
As any marketing wizard will attest you can easily run your own publicity drive for free. All you have to do is enlist the usual social media suspects – the likes of Twitter and Facebook, and now. But (yawn) running a marketing campaign that way is starting to look tired and trite.
For inspiration on building your brand without busting the budget, consider some stunts spotted by observers in the know.
The efforts below suggest that money matters less than imagination. Lateral thinking carries the day.
1. Making a splash
Erik Bigalk, creative marketing consultant
On August 2, UK beauty brand Soap & Glory plunged a huge sculpture of a bather into the Inner Alster: a lake in Hamburg, Germany. The two tonne steel-and-polystyrene woman, who stretches 20 metres, was a way for the firm to thank German buyers of their products after launching in the country nine months ago.
The sculpture made a splash, he adds, in terms of instant public impact and “lasting word-of-mouth”.
He describes the stunt as “well outside of the box” and a way of boosting the company's branding mileage.
The stunt also gave Soap & Glory greater market reach because, he says, the story made international news beyond the UK, in Australia and the us.
Marketing consultant Erik Bigalk.
At time of writing, CNN's story had inspired 169 comments and 1839 Facebook recommendations.
2. Aussie rules
Michael Halligan, founder/chief marketer, Engage Marketing
The soft drink brand Jarritos pulled off a “very cool, clever and remarkably simple” stunt for the AFL grand final, Halligan says.
The driver of the Jarritos-branded van rose early to be the first vehicle admitted to the grand final car park at the stadium's front.
“All he had to do was pay the $8 parking ticket and he got the brand in front of a hell of a lot of eyeballs,” Halligan says.
The event lures an audience of 100,000 people. While Halligan doubts that the stunt appeared on TV, many people blogged about it and spoke about it on social media. “So its reach went far beyond the 100,000 people at
